#its not a super elaborate cosplay but i still enjoy it!!

[mothdruid]

i actually cosplayed today for a local convention!! first time since 2019 🤭

[slasherflicks999]

BEN MY BELOVED 😍😍😍😍 ……BENloved? yes……

FIIIIINALLY made an actual proper design for him after eons of not being able to get his outfit right guys are we proud….. i always had a vague idea of it i just could never execute it properly LMAO

I LOVE HIIIIIIIIMMMMM did you guys know

i also almost forgot his freckles as i do literally every single time i draw him despite the fact ive been drawing him covered in freckles since i was like 14 ummmm its fine i remembered eventually 😍

more rambles and yapping about him in my au after the break :3 again… I YAP A LOT. like seriously. i really could talk about him all day tbh

but first surprise doodle HEHEHEH

moving on… lets talk about his design a little to start off bcccc look at it it’s the first thing you’ve seen obvi (and bc im doing this in a similar format to my oc slasher’s post where i ramble about the design then character and personality stuff then whatever else yay!)

now. you may be looking at him and going “woah he is COLORFUL!” yes he is! i think having him be colorful is fun but beyond that like… ok u need some context first: in my au he’s not stuck in the cartridge anymore which i will elaborate on later, but likeee i still had to give him some nods to his LoZ origins other than just making him blonde and giving him elf ears and green clothes without literally making him the world’s most dedicated link cosplayer. love his cosplay era you go queen but i just feel like MY version wouldn’t be in it after he gets out of the cartridge (again will explain more later) bc he figured maybe he should be his own person a little bit. and idk if yall knew this but… zelda games get pretty colorful!

that being said i still wanted to have an itty bitty nod to it thrown in there so if you look on his jacket those fun little doohickeys on one of the sides are the colors of the spikes on the side of majora’s mask in game :3 i also gave him his little hoop earrings like adult link has because cmon. he’s gotta have em. and beyond just that he also has the green hair and like… idk what to call em, those fun little ball jointed doll looking joints i see people draw canon arg BEN with because i like them and since he’s sort of a merging of canon behavioral event network BEN and a more “fanon” version of him i wanted to nod back to it a little

beyond that he’s just a lot more generally technology inspired, like he’s literally wearing wires as accessories and those semi-transparent bits are supposed to look like the inner membrane of a keyboard! (saw some guy make shoes out of those once and said “oh i gotta use that idea” so i did :3) idk i just wanted him to look fun and like he eats circuit boards. he doesn’t but like… he’s definitely thought about it once

anyway MOVING PAST ME YAPPING ABOUT MY DESIGN THOUGHT PROCESS let’s talk about what he’s actually like!

i feel like it’s pretty often i see people make him either totally spooky or totally silly but you see…. i enjoy both…. so….. :3 let’s see if i can merge the two

generally when writing any of the pastas i try my best to write them ALL to be more or less morally gray largely bc i think it makes them more interesting than just making them all automatically evil just because they’re meant to be horror characters/murderers. idk i feel like it adds more complexity not only to them as individuals but also dynamics and makes them feel more like actual characters than static entities that jump out at you and go BOO! or on the other side of the spectrum anime twinks. staring directly at the 2010s fandom LMAOOO /lh

WITH THAT BEING SAID! he is definitely not a saint in any sense of the word like whatsoever but he also is not super evil. like he’s not always gonna have good intentions but at the same time he’s not entirely heartless and does genuinely care about some people yk?? he’s not walking around punching old ladies or anything but is he gonna go out of his way to be particularly nice to you? hell no he’s not! not unless he REEEEEALLY cares about you/likes you but even then you might not be able to tell LMAO it depends it depends

even then at the end of the day he is more or less a demonic entity and LITERALLY feeds off of negative emotions/energy, like he will become genuinely exhausted if he doesn’t torment tf out of someone for a while, he doesn’t just do that shit for funsies, he needs to or else he will feel like total shit. just so bad. not to say he doesn’t gain ANY enjoyment out of it at all but like that’s not his main motivation.

that’s the thing that makes him different from a lot of other pastas too, his method of killing isn’t anything physical, he just literally torments the living shit out of people until they kick the bucket themselves. at this point he’s rather numb to and detached from it, but i imagine it definitely disturbed him quite a bit when he was figuring out that he had to do it to keep himself satiated essentially. he definitely freaked himself out quite a lot when he was freshly dead like yeah he was angry and vengeful but like… he was also kinda just a scared little kid who got stuck in a video game and saw himself as a monster for a few years guys 💔💔 probably still kinda does view himself like that in many ways. my shaylaaa…

speaking of let’s talk about his LORE :3

first of all present day he is 19. but he’s dead! you shout. yes he is! kinda! lemme explain:

well first and foremost for all intents and purposes he IS dead. but he’s also not JUST a ghost. remember how i mentioned him being demonic? yeah i wasn’t exaggerating about that LOL, plus if he WAS just a ghost he wouldn’t need anything to keep himself satiated like he does with energy

when he died he ended up being the moon children’s first successful instance of actual digitization… key word being SUCCESSFUL. they had tried the same thing before with others, but their actual souls ended up not being able to entirely make it through the process, with some not getting through at all and others being sort of fragmented with only the scraps of what they used to be remaining. even so, all of their heartbreak and pain and anguish and rage they felt in response to their deaths (and probably even whatever they had experienced in life) ended up forming its own makeshift demonic entity. it was all sorts of unstable and constantly seemed to be searching for more and more energy to even keep itself together, but it didn’t have anything to truly attach itself to that make it much more than just a mass of jumbled up energies desperately trying to survive. until ben died. then it had something it could keep itself alive with. it had a body, more or less. something more tangible and stable than just… fragments.

this ended up being what turned ben lowercase into BEN uppercase! it also… came with lots of side effects.

we already talked about how he needs to keep getting negative energy to keep his literal energy up, but this sort of fusion also made him a LOT more powerful than he was supposed to be. he’s essentially fueled on spite LOL but besides that he also was able to literally warp a lot of the game to his will (not entirely, but he wasn’t supposed to be able to change anything at all), the soul fragments gave him the ability to control his aging and parts of his appearance more or less (he can appear as practically any age he wants but mentally ages normally, though he really doesn’t do much with that and just lets himself age normally because he kind of doesn’t wanna stay a weird little middle schooler forever LMAO. his ability to control his appearance is also pretty much entirely out of his control until he escapes the cartridge though, before that he can only really change how his eyes look and his general spookiness though even that was and still is mostly connected to his emotional/mental state.)

he also suddenly gets VERY good at just… understanding how people work in general. he gets really good at the whole manipulation and torment thing really quickly to the point where it even starts to freak himself out a bit (sort of like i mentioned before.) he tries not to dwell on that for too long though. he does his best to get used to himself now even if he really did not like how he turned out at first.

but anyway shortly after all this happens and BEN figures out he needs to really fuck with people to feel at least kind of okay, the cartridge began having so many horrible mental effects on anyone who was even AROUND it that eventually they just had to throw the thing out as a sort of “failed experiment” which explains how it eventually got into the hands of jadusable who posted about it and that in turn essentially opened a door for BEN to get out.

this was great for him in many ways! freedom yippee yippee freedom! he was much, MUCH less limited in his abilities now and had a lot easier access to new people to torment which generally had him feeling a lot better energy-wise and eventually made him a lot less aggressive since he wasn’t essentially hangry and exhausted 24/7. that being said… he was still trapped in the cartridge for about 3 years. that does things to a person. especially since he was so young.

he has a LOT of trauma from it, which is another reason i didn’t go with the link cosplay route for his design beyond just i wanted to give him a personality outside of just loving zelda games (although let’s be honest it probably is still a special interest of his (YES HES AUTISTIC because i am autistic and me and him are like this 🤞🏻)) he was literally STUCK looking like that which is the main reason he gave himself his own wardrobe basically the second he could, because he still loves link and the LoZ games and all but he didn’t wanna feel stuck like that anymore. it made him feel trapped and lose his sense of self a little bit so he was like “yeah i gotta get a different outfit.”

it also definitely made him a control freak. if he doesn’t have at least a good amount of control over a situation it sort of freaks him out and gives him that same sort of trapped, helpless feeling. he gets a little better with it as he grows but that never really goes away, he hates feeling powerless in any situation which i think also helped him come to terms with the whole tormenting people thing, because it made him feel like he had power over something and it still does even if there’s a lot more he has control of now. this is also why he’s not technically a proxy, because he doesn’t want slender to have that control over him, it makes him feel weird. he still hangs around and is civil with him, he just doesn’t wanna actually work for him. he’s his own boss 🙂‍↕️🙂‍↕️

he doesn’t really like to talk about his life before his death all that much though. all that anyone seems to know is he didn’t have a great childhood after a certain age and he just doesn’t wanna talk about it, which of course nobody questioned because almost all the pastas had at least somewhat traumatic childhoods LMAO

anyway! now that a lot of the more serious lore shit is out of the way time for me to just mindlessly throw shit out there about him because!! i love him!!!! fun facts fun facts!!!

- first of all agender he/it/they BEN is real in this house. and gay aroace BEN. and autistic BEN as previously mentioned. he doesn’t know if this is because of the soul fragments thing but he really could not care less about how he presents his gender for the most part, all he knows is he generally presents masculine bc it’s sort of his default :3

- he also still def loves video games! he’s even played through majora’s mask a couple times to try and help himself get over his trauma around it (though it takes him a long time to actually get through it now) he kinda hates that his trauma still prevents him from loving it as much as he used to :(( but at least he can play the other zelda games mostly fine which he’s glad about

- he purrs. that’s it that’s the whole thing he purrs. well he generally acts like a cat in a lot of ways for some reason like his ears moving and stuff but i think the best thing is that he purrs bc it’s just so funny to me. he definitely tries not to do it in front of anyone but has probably slipped up once or twice and promptly retreated into the nearest computer for a week or so because he was so mortified LMAO. very cat coded one of my own cats reminds me of him a little bc she’s sassy will act like she doesn’t care about you but then will purr up a storm if you scratch her in the right spot while she’s comfy. love her. they would get along great

- he is SO COLD. ALL THE TIME. he’s used to it by now but if you were to touch him it would be like touching a corpse laying outside on a late autumn evening or something like he does not know warmth. he does love blankets and warm things bc of that though. if he likes you enough to give you a hug he WILL be latched on like a leech just to take all ur body heat

- he can still eat and drink and sleep if he wants to but he doesn’t have to, like i said he runs off of negative emotions so all that other stuff is just a fun little bonus if he feels like it

-his colors will desaturate a good amount and he’ll start to glitch out quite a bit if he gets too low on energy, along with just being generally irritable and overstimulated

-he also just… glitches sometimes for no reason. any time he stutters or stumbles over his words he doesn’t actually stutter, just glitches. sneeze? glitch. got jumpscared by a bug? glitch. trying not to laugh? glitch. little things like that. along with just when he’s feeling really strong emotions (especially negative ones ofc)

- he actually does like nature a lot! it sort of helps him feel a lot more connected to reality outside of just the internet and technology and whatnot, plus he just finds it kind of peaceful in a way he can’t really get from hanging out in a digital void. maybe it’s the energy of the plants and animals or something

- he also enjoys music a lot :3 all sorts, though he does like electronica and hardcore stuff the most

-i cant lie…. he would definitely scream at people over COD. his temper isn’t AS short as it used to be but likeeee… he’s broken a few controllers 😔 he’s not really the yelling type at all otherwise though

-he’s like 5’7 ish by default. he can change that if he REALLY wanted to but he doesn’t see the point in wasting the energy if he can just float a couple inches above the ground anyway. plus he got his heels on so even if he does stand on the ground he gave himself a couple more inches of height :3 me too me too

-he does still cry blood! happens the most when he’s pissed off or trying to look scary but it will happen if he’s genuinely sad and like legit crying too

-he won’t let many people know it but he’s really claustrophobic (it means he’s afraid of santa claus 😯☝️ /ref) definitely scared of large bodies of water as well but that one’s more well known because…. he did DROWN. actually just realizing i didn’t mention his actual drowning much but anyway i feel like that would have less of a daily impact on him than the rest of his trauma anyway. stills definitely there but doesn’t directly impact him in as many ways

-my au probably takes place in like the mid-late 2000s but if it was in the modern day he would totally say shit like “chat am i cooked” or “that’s so sigma” in real situations on accident

i could talk about him literally for hours upon hours but im gonna stop here before i give myself an aneurysm LMAOOO thank you so much for reading all my nonsense rambles if you did!! :D very very much appreciated i WILL be posting more about him in the future hehe

i hope anyone who read this far enjoyed!! :D i definitely had fun writing hehe but im so tired and i now have to go to BED😭😭😭 thank you so much again tumblr for letting me yap🙂‍↕️🙂‍↕️🙂‍↕️🙂‍↕️

[glorified-red]

Classify the boys as they types of fanfic writers you've encountered. :))))

Thank you so much for the request! Don't think I have to tell you how much it means to me to open up my Tumblr and see 10 asks sitting in my inbox.

The BatBoys as Fanfic Writers on Tumblr

word count: 1100~

warnings: none

Dick Grayson: The Popular One

Mostly known for his AU’s because he comes up with completely original AU’s no ones ever even considered writing about

Focuses more on plot rather than feelings, very dialogue heavy

Has done a coffee shop AU

Probably a mermaid AU if you dig deep enough

He likes to go into detail about minute things in his storyline that have nothing to do with the plot but it makes the read much more interesting

Longest taglist ever

Gets plenty of asks asking to be put on his taglist and he's always super sweet when answering them

Very, very interactive fanbase

Spends hours making headers just because it looks cool

Uses pretty dividers

His master list is so aesthetically pleasing you could stare at it for hours, probably even has a key

Dick doesn't like posting regularly, instead he likes to post whenever he has the time or feels like it

Makes up for lack of new content by reblogging things

Reblogs like a champ and WILL spam reblog

Leaves an insane amount of nice comments on every fic he reads

If he follows your blog you have his profile pic memorized because he likes to interact incredibly often 

Super bright pfp that's easily memorizable

Does not mind doing a face reveal

Huge following and very popular

Insane amount of mutuals and their biggest supporter 

Always does tag games and tags like twenty people

Super long bio

Jason Todd: The Realist

Has a “Dark Blog”

Jason likes to bring awareness to real world situations through his writing so it can get dark real quick on his blog

Makes sure to tag thoroughly and has plenty of warnings throughout his blog

Mood-boards Mood-boards Mood-boards Mood-boards

Probably doesn't use dividers but uses ----- or ~~~~

NSFW blog but super kinky that his summary/warnings can be a whole story in itself

Puts his own poetry up ONCE and his fanbase begged him for more because it was so good

Regularly has a poetry night where his fans can send some of their poetry in and Jason will give advice/react/add on etc

Has a horny night right after just to spite his followers

Jason has two separate blogs, one dark and one is a casual one for ‘normal’ fics so his fans can stay comfortable

Probably has a cheesy name for his dark blog like “After Hours” or “Dark Mode”

His profile picture is an aesthetic picture like smoke or a gun on his dark blog and the colors are just inverted on his light blog due to laziness

A good amount of followers but they’re all really interactive and act like a small family circle

Doesn't do tag games

He has like 3 mutuals he regularly talks to and one of them is an irl friend

Likes to remind his followers to drink water or go eat at random but then is the one to get snarky with them or bonk them on the head for getting too horny in his inbox

Writes about feelings a lot, goes very in depth to what his characters are feeling at any given moment, physically and mentally

Has his pronouns in his bio

Tim Drake: The Original Novelist

Very elaborate writer

Sucks at dialogue but makes up for it with his lore and descriptions

Does a ton of original work, has like ten original series’ in his master list with more than fifteen parts each

Makes his own worlds with his own lore but adds in the characters because he still wants to write for his fandom

Basically an author already

Uses words you have to google sometimes

Requests are closed and doesn't respond to feedback in his inbox but secretly rereads them

Tim’s master list is intricate with multiple links to other master lists

Pretty basic/boring headers/dividers to not distract from the links

Posts at random, can go a month or two without posting a fic and then posts nothing but fics for a week straight

Too scared to reblog things at first, barely ever likes things either

Uses the tags very often to scream into the void

Reblogs things that has nothing to do with the fandom he writes for that you'll get whiplash every time you open his blog from how random it can be

On the rare occasions Tim does comment or reblog, he’ll quote a specific line from the fic and scream about how good it was

His profile pic is a random ass photo he liked one day and refuses to change it even if it has nothing to do with his fandom

Refuses to do a face reveal but does post cosplay photos with his face blurred or a mask on

Decent following and only popular because of one original series that blew up

Tim had a few mutuals and hypes them up in private so he can tell them each and every moment he enjoyed in their fic

Does tag games but always says “I tag whoever wants to do this” because he never knows who to tag

His bio is literally just his masterlist because he has a separate bio in there

Damian Wayne: The Conversationist 

Mainly does headcanons but when he does sit down and write, its hella long and very well thought out

Loves writing body language and going into depth about the flaws of his characters

His writing is not fancy at first but its very immersive - one line in and you can easily picture everything, very good at imagery

Damian opens his askbox for headcanons from his followers and will disprove them with facts or add on with his version of canon 

Amazingly good at characterization as if he wrote the character himself 

No headers, he only uses titles

He doesn't even see the point in dividers until someone shows him then he decides to makes his own (insanely good btw)

Posts on a regular schedule to the point that you don't even need his notifs on, you can just open your phone on a certain and know Damian posted

Does not reblog things, its his own blog so why should he reblog other people's things? 

Strictly a writing blog so its very easy to scroll through and see nothing but fics

He has his pet as his profile picture

Not the biggest follower count but he doesn't care about it, he came to write nothing else

No mutuals, only people he knows of and interacts with but does not consider them mutuals

His bio is super simple, just “Writer of __ fandom”

Taglist ♡

@anothertimdrakestan

@bungunz

@red-hood-redemption​

[aforgottenballad]

Feelings on Sally Face Episode 5

Under a read more for obvious reasons, includes heavy spoilers and potentially triggering subjects. 

Disclaimer: I might miss-remember some parts of the story or have missed a piece of lore that would settle minor complaints. I am however disappointed in the ending as a whole and in some of the very harmful tropes included in it. But I’m also just some dude online with an opinion, and you can stop reading at any time. 

Rant under cut. 

Alright ya’ll. I’ve had a couple days to digest the ending to Sally Face.  While playing, I genuinely enjoyed some elements of the game. The chapter started on a dark but nearly hopeful note. Neil and Ash were still working to bring the cult down. It seemed likely Sal would be resurrected. Todd had apparently escaped the hospital, and that had potential to be either a very very good or very very bad thing. Maple was possessed by whatever fucked up the souls of the other apartment tenants, but hey! At least her and Neil weren’t in on the cult like so many fans predicted. Unfortunately, this series has a way of getting darker and darker as it progresses.  First thing that bugged me was the lore drop about how the cult was founded.  A Native American tribe. Right. Because why wouldn’t Indigenous peoples be in a story without being part of some mystical occult backstory, portrayed as mysterious historical props who worshiped something dark and evil instead of being portrayed as human beings. 

But I continued. I really enjoyed playing as Ashley and getting some insight into her character. I enjoyed the task of planting the C4 in the temple... catacomb... thing. We get to see Travis again! I was excited that a lot of us were right about him being indoctrinated but also working to fight the cult from the inside. We knew he had some good in him after all. 

When Ash tries to resurrect Sal, we get even more insight into her character, and unfortunately a lot of it is “Grieving, distraught, and full of self-blame”. I want to hug her.  Sal’s spirit is apparently revived by those pyramids, and he can dimension warp. We meet Jim, or what’s left of him, and he doesn’t give a fuck about anything anymore but agrees to help Sal anyway. This is, narratively speaking, weird as hell. His entire character arc for four episodes was “Loved his family so much he sacrificed himself to save them”, and suddenly he’s just some glowy dude attached to Magic Spirit Tubes who doesn’t give half a shit. I guess it makes sense as a way to wrap up why he’s been able to drift between worlds but... if he doesn’t care about any of that anymore why help Sal? And what about Rosenberg? Is she like Jim, or do we just have to assume she’s magical because her family helped found the cult? (Explained in an easter egg later on, because this game doesn’t just drop its lore. Not even the CRUCIAL lore. You have to achievement hunt for it.) Sal can enter various doors in the House In The Void to step into alternate realities, and this was my favorite aspect of the game. Each door has a different art style, and I really liked seeing these alternate realities. Steve probably worked the hardest and longest on drawing out and coding these scenes. I genuinely applaud the man for the work put into this endeavor I’m assuming all by himself. 

Meanwhile, Ash tries to unbind Larry’s soul from the tree house he died in, which doesn’t work. Did we ever find out why his body was never found? No? Ok that seems important.

After each puzzle, Sal’s body is restored a little bit at a time, but even after turning on all the pyramids and solving the mysteries behind all three doors, he can’t make it back to the “real” world. So Ashley kills herself. Or tries to. Because apparently that’s the only way to complete the ritual, and also because she feels really bad about not unbinding Larry’s soul and about not fixing Sal. Again, I want to hug her, but I have to watch her hurt herself instead, cause Steve doesn’t let us have nice things.

Okay, so this is a gorey game. We know. But one of the BIGGEST no-nos suicide prevention networks will tell you when consulting them about mental illness and suicide in media is NOT to show a graphic suicide in progress. Steve is aware a lot of his fans are A) Young teens to young adults B) Struggling with mental illness. 

His main character suffers from depression and anxiety and this fact has resonated with hundreds of fans. It’s irresponsible to purposefully include a graphic suicide attempt, but he did it last chapter, showing a gunshot suicide’s aftermath, then he did it again with Ashley. Call me a wiener if you like, point out the graphic scenes from earlier in the game and call me a hypocrite for not being upset by that, but you have to admit the Spongebob-close-up-shot look to those scenes have a totally different feel. Speaking as someone who actually has a pretty thick skin, but is concerned about the fans who might be in a worse place or who could be as young as 12, that was fucked up. 

Anyway, Ash’s attempt doesn’t take, because she’s struck by magic lightning, which infuses Sal’s soul into her. Now her arm is one of those stretchy sticky hands, but with bio luminescence and the ability to kick cultist ass. I actually thought this part was really cool, and was super ready to go on a cultist smacking spree. But again, we can’t have nice things and before we get to do anything badass we have to look at gruesome imagery again. 

You get to see Void Larry, who is now old and a wizard or something, but first...

Surprise! Maple and Neil are dead! Not just dead, but hung up from hooks covered in blood! And naked! 

Hey?? Hey Steve????? You know how they’re both POC?? And that lynching imagery is EXTREMELY NOT GOOD?!!????

“Two white people are hung up with them” YEAH? WELL WE’VE NEVER SEEN THOSE CHARACTERS BEFORE. THEY’RE JUST RANDOM PEOPLE.

I’ve seen people arguing “The white characters go through terrible things too” but it’s still really fucked up that by the end of the game, every. Single. Person of color. In the game. Has died. Gruesomely. It’s a gorey, dark, bleak game, and white characters die as well, gruesomely; but not all of them. None of them that are named are shown strung up, naked. That’s fucked up. That isn’t okay. 

There are also a total of three gay characters in this game. One is Todd, who goes through the standard “bad bad stuff” the game is used to, is the white one, and he survives. One is Neil, one of the aforementioned people of color who died horribly and who only really existed to be Todd’s boyfriend and therefore a source of angst for Todd when he dies. The third is Travis, another man of color, and an abuse victim, who dies to fulfill his character arc as an abuse victim, which is also really shitty to see over and over again as an abuse survivor. 

Look, I know Steve pulled a lot of inspiration from old TV shows and horror series that probably weren’t all “politically correct”. I know it’s always been kind of an edgy and dark game. I know Steve probably didn’t think about the repercussions of all his narrative choices. But I also know he actively ignored some people offering to educate him on issues he has no experience with. I know he worked hard on this game, by himself, but we as fans have paid him and waited for years and it isn’t selfish or ungrateful to be hurt and disappointed. He knows his audience is diverse, he knows a lot of us were attracted to the game because of a gender nonconforming main character, a main character who struggles with mental illness, a cast that isn’t 100% white and conventionally attractive. Of course he didn’t need to change the plot for us! It’s his game, his vision, but the least he could have done is research how to not actively hurt and alienate a good portion of us.  I don’t think anyone is bad or racist for still finding solace in the characters and in what the story was before this, I’m not attacking you personally, whoever is reading this. I, personally, still have loads of Sally Face art in my queue, I still have active role plays going on, my Sal wig is sitting like 8 feet away waiting for the next time my friends want to take cosplay pictures. I still enjoyed playing the game for the most part. Without this game I wouldn’t even know most of my current friends. It’s just really shitty how it ended like this, and a lot of people I talk to daily either feel too sick to even talk about the game anymore after seeing people like them treated like trash by the narrative or try to focus on the good things they got out of just being part of the fandom but don’t feel comfortable supporting the developer anymore. 

Even if there wasn’t all these hurtful tropes packed into the game, and yes, even after unlocking the epilogue, the game just feels cold. It feels rushed, probably because of how much time went into the alternate dimension gimmick. I wish Steve had at least consulted people over the script. It felt like not only did he pour all his work into experimenting with the mixed media, he also just took whatever expectations the fans had and went somewhere completely different just to have his story be “unpredictable”. That isn’t always a good thing. Plot twists, downer endings, dark and scary imagery, all of these things can be done beautifully, but in this case it felt like he just wanted the series to end. The game didn’t subvert expectations, it fed into the harmful stereotypes and tropes all the fans were so hopeful it wouldn’t. 

...On top of not making any sense unless you’re able to 100% all the puzzles. And even when you do, it feels like all the bad stuff happened for no reason. The ending doesn’t conclude anything. Even when you unlock the epilogue, all it tells you is that a third of the world has died and that the main cast haven’t accomplished much besides “Trying to help”. Sal and Todd have powers now, but that isn’t elaborated on much. Larry’s spirit is missing, if he even exists in any plane at all anymore. It doesn’t even mention what’s going on with Ash.  It just feels like nothing mattered.